VICE News Guide to the World — Week of February 5

Donald Trump may be a world of chaos all by himself, but the world beyond Trump is changing in dramatic ways, often with little notice. We’d like to tell you about it and we’re keeping track of these global changes, from the incremental to the monumental, so that you don’t have to.

South Korea: Pyeongchang's politics

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in attend short track speed skating events at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics. (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)

North and South Korea staged a remarkable show of unity as the 2018 Winter Olympics kicked off in Pyeongchang, South Korea, marching in the opening ceremony together under the same flag. You’d almost forget that a week before, U.S. President Donald Trump used a good chunk of his first State of the Union to blast Pyongyang as “depraved” amid reports that the White House is still mulling its “bloody nose” plan to launch a limited strike on the Hermit Kingdom.

Trump’s words were not lost amid the Olympic cheer. “It’s a forewarning of how the Trump administration will handle the North Korean nuclear and missile issue in the future,” said Yoo Seung-min, chairperson of the center-right Bareun Party, at a recent parliamentary meeting. “War on the peninsula could be started by both North Korea and the United States.”
Trump's "bloody nose" plan for North Korea could make a mess of the Olympics / Max S. Kim

Honduras: U.S. wades into a disputed election

President Juan Orlando Hernández’s controversial re-election in Honduras has thrown the fragile nation into crisis, and the U.S. has its fingerprints all over the situation. Despite widespread corruption scandals and political assassinations, the U.S. has stuck by Honduras’s military and police time and again. The result, critics say, is a government that now operates above the law.

$6K

That’s the level below which bitcoin fell at the lowest point of its volatile roller coaster ride last week, marking a stunning loss of over two-thirds of its value from a peak of more than $19,000 in December.
Bitcoin just slid below $6000/ David Gilbert

Syria: “There is nowhere for them to escape”

A woman gestures as she walks on rubble of damaged buildings after an airstrike in the besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/ Bassam Khabieh

The Syrian regime kept up a brutal campaign against the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta, killing over 200 civilians by Friday. The onslaught of airstrikes, with support from Russia, continued despite a desperate plea from the UN for a break in the fighting to allow for humanitarian aid, and days after the U.S. condemned the regime for its repeated use of chemical weapons.

“The simple truth: There is nothing."

— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested his innocence on Facebook after local media said Israeli police will soon recommend his indictment for demanding an receiving gifts, including champagne and Cuban cigars, from businessmen in exchange for favors. Bibi is about to be indicted for corruption / Tim Hume

"Instinctively I turned around, I went home, I opened the safe and took the pistol and decided to kill them all."

“Like a full-on Caligula orgy.”

—An unnamed source speaking to the Times describing video footage from a party thrown by senior aid workers for U.K. charity group Oxfam, who paid young Haitian girls for sex following the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Oxfam denied trying to cover up the incident. Top Oxfam staff paid survivors for sex after the 2010 earthquake /The Sunday Times